Abstract
Proteomics has been successfully applied to many biomedical fields. Among these, high altitude (HA) proteomics has attracted researchers in past few years. Adaptation to hypobaric hypoxia (HH) is necessary for humans under several environmental, physiological and pathological situations. High altitude environmental challenges are major concern for sojourners, soldiers and mountaineers not only during their initial days of induction to the hypoxic environment but during long term residency. Hypoxia triggers oxidative stress and damage to proteins, lipids and DNA. This condition can occur due to environmental factors (altitude), toxicity or diseases. Sometimes body overcome the stress caused by hypoxia through unique process of self recovery and adaptation. Identifying the molecular variables playing key roles in this process are of prime importance in understanding the mechanisms for counteracting the negative effects oxygen deprivation that may lead to several diseases. Proteins play vital role in these physiological conditions and can be considered as molecular signature for altitude adaptation. Several proteins have been identified and categorised on the basis of their role in hypoxia and HA adaptation. Recent advances in proteomics have opened new vistas to understand the functional aspect of differential expression of proteins. Linking existing proteins together, finding newer proteins and their functional analysis can provide better understanding of the physiological mechanism underlying adaptation to hypoxia. New information coming from the analysis of the novel proteins offers opportunity to further analyse the cellular responses to HH.
Highlights
The human habitation includes diverse range of environments; some of the most extreme of these environments are found at high altitudes
The high altitude hypoxia can not be completely separated as a pathological condition either from hypoxia due to cellular toxicity or a disease
People who fall in between the i.e. those who ascends to high altitude (HA) regions necessarily face sickness ranging from altitude sickness to either normalization or turning into more serious conditions like High altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), high altitude cerebral edema (HACE) etc
Summary
The human habitation includes diverse range of environments; some of the most extreme of these environments are found at high altitudes. The cellular responses to hypoxia are rather complex and characterized by alterations in expression of a number of stress related proteins, proteins associated with energy metabolism and angiogenic pathway proteins such as HSPs, NOS, GAPDH, VEGF, Erythropoietin [16,17,18]. By using the different proteomic approaches (above mentioned), it has been possible to analyze differentially expressed proteins and assess the changes in metabolic pathways in response to hypoxia at the tissue level.
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